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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zad" data-source="post: 3361507" data-attributes="member: 90">Two bits from my still-addled mind: (Been sick all week)A world that feels real is a laudable goal, and at times an elusive one. It requires several things.First, your material has to provide you with the necessary depth - that or you have to go make it up yourself. Sure the latter is possible but your workload is lower the first way.Second, you have to execute it well. Good material in the hands of a DM who doesn't use it is useless. And even the best DM can have a hard time making bad material work.Third, your players have to have some level of buy-in and try to work with it. A group that wants to hack and slash doesn't care about tax collectors, they just want someplace to dump their loot. It's joint storytelling so you can't have half the team on board.One of the biggest things I think contributes to the feeling of a real world (and some readers have heard us say this often) is that actions should have consequences. Both good and bad, there needs to be cause and effect and it has to be visible to the players. If they aren't punished for unfavorable actions, there's no reason to avoid them or to think before you act. If they aren't rewarded either, then there's no reason to try - they feel that the story is just playing out around them regardless of what they do. (Ravenloft II anyone?) Players shouldn't feel like spectators, generally speaking.A rehash for many of you for sure - TdC I'm sure knows all this for instance <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> But I think those are the key ingredients to making the world feel like it's more than just "Shop 24 sells magic items."Shackled City seems to put a lot of emphasis on vendor relationships. I recognized it right away and have gotten better at rubbing elbows effectively in this area. (Not that it's a strong suit of my skills/character, just that I keep the notes/records, and therefore loot falls under that. So we chose to roleplay it more than doing a lot of bluff/appraise checks.)</blockquote>

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